Meijer app steers customers to exact locations of products in-store

Midwest retailer Meijer has rolled out a mobile application that it will use to analyze customer behavior to provide better and more personalized service to increase sales and customer loyalty.

The retailer tapped Point Inside to create the app. Shoppers can pinpoint the location of more than 300,000 items in the Meijer retail supercenter using their smartphones.

Location-based services are popular, but no one seemed to have solved how to get someone from entrance to product location for a mass merchant, said Elizabeth Wilson, head of ecommerce, marketing and promotions at Meijer Inc., Grand Rapids, MI.

We thought this was a great service for our customers, she said. An app is just an app if it doesnt make the users life easier.

The ability to assist any customer with a smartphone if a team member isnt near by and the ability to keep us innovating the technology are the challenges that Point Inside addresses for Meijer.

Meijer was founded in1934 as a supermarket chain. In 1962 the company was credited with developing the very first supercenter.

The app provides updated information on weekly specials and product promotions available in the store, and syncs wirelessly with the customer loyalty program.

Point Inside has technologies for micro-location inside venues. These capabilities allow

Meijer to steer customers to the exact locations of products and deliver targeted content such as coupons or sale information, based on the customers location within a Meijer store combined with current and past behaviors.

The app is moving out of the pilot phase at five stores and will soon be available for use at more than 200 stores.

The Meijer Find-it app is currently available for Android and iPhone. The application targets consumers ages 18-44.

Coming soon is the ability to share a shopping list so that the person preparing dinner can send the list to another person to pick-up items on the way home.

Initially, Mejer relied on word of mouth to market the app. Without any money spent on marketing, the app got a few hundred downloads a day.

Now, Meijer will be actively marketing the app to its entire shopping base via its Web site, in the store and through direct communications with loyalty program members.

Weve always been impressed by how Meijer cares about providing great, leading edge services to their shoppers, said Jon Croy, vice president of business development and cofounder of Pointe Inside, Bellevue, WA.

Location-based services such as being able to tell a customer exactly where to find a product answers the question that is asked thousands of times each day at the checkout counter: did you find everything that you were looking for, he said.